African Piety

There is a fatalism here which I’m afraid I’ll never understand.  Every outcome and occurrence is resigned to the realm of the divine.  Every instance of fortune is determined by the whims of the supreme.  Every consequence is singularly the work of God.  This belief, not merely in God, but in the absoluteness and immutability of one’s own fate, permeates every aspect of life.  Neither effort nor determination can lead to success; only the blessings of God, or the benevolence of a blessed family member or friend bring good fortune.  Neither indolence nor profligacy bring about failure; only the loss of God’s favor can do that.  It’s disheartening and at the same time maddening.

If you ask a beggar why he squats on the ground, supplicating himself to those who pass by, he will tell you it the will of God.  This isn’t surprising.  Attitudes like this are found among the impoverished and unfortunate throughout the world.  However, if you ask a taxi driver how he obtained the car he drives to make a living and to feed his family and to send his children to school and to allow him a comfortable standard of living, chances are, his reply won’t differ much from that of the beggar.  He may have worked hard on his farm and put his money away and lived within his means, but that is of no consequence.  It was God who, in his infinite and absolute wisdom, chose him to drive a taxi, sparing him from endless days of toil in on his small plot of farm land.

Instead of saving his money, let’s say the driver had the good fortune of knowing, either as a blood relation or by means of friendship, a much wealthier man who gave him the money for his car.  If that is the case, chances are, he believes this rich man was blessed and had chosen, by his own equally mysterious and equally divine whims, to bestow some of his blessing on the driver.  It’s everywhere, faith in God is absolute and ultimate.  An individual’s actions are arbitrary and meaningless in the greatness of God’s cosmos.  Men and women may choose what to wear or what to eat or what to do in their leisure, but at the very instance any of those decisions take on any significant consequence, they become the decisions of God, based not in a rational analysis of cause and effect but in the inexplicability of God’s design.

Perhaps I’m generalizing too much.  I don’t suppose all Ghanaians think this way.  Many people here do genuinely value education and hard work and ability, but this attitude is nearly universal in the poorer, rural parts of the country.  That isn’t surprising.  The poor, especially those in less populated areas, tend to be more religious.  However, the similarities between Africa and the only other country I’ve ever called home, America, end there.

I grew up with religion in America.  My parents raised me as a Catholic.  I was baptized, given communion, and confirmed.  I’ve moved on since then, I’ve left the church and I no longer consider myself to be religious, but I have a sense of what constitutes piety, at least in America.  Rarely, if ever, do even the most devout among us truly resign themselves to the belief that their own misfortune is absolute and brought about by divine subjectivity.  Most of us would admit that chance plays a role in every outcome, but sheer determination and willpower, combined with ability and foresight, are invariably the most important factors in one’s own success or failure.  We even coin aphorisms and turns of phrase to reconcile our fierce individuality with the terrifying omniscience and interconnectedness of the kingdom of God.  Teachers and mentors have told me, in the wake of misfortune, that “when God closes a door, he opens a window”.  My own mother has counseled me countless times that “God helps those who help themselves”.  People of all sorts, from neighbors to television personalities to strangers, describe strokes of adversity, regardless of the magnitude of their consequence, as “blessings in disguise”.  But I never hear this in Ghana.

Maybe I’m being too hard on the Ghanaians.  It is easy for me to admonish so many of them for their piety, for their reluctance to take credit for their successes and responsibility for their failures.  I’m successful.  Sometimes not by my own standards, and rarely by the standards of my colleagues and peers, but almost certainly in the more universal, “global village” sense.  I see why they have their religion, why they embrace (God forbid I say “cling to”) their Christianity and Islam so unconditionally.  For the people here, belief in the notion of God’s absolute control is a helping hand propping up a broken body politic, bearing the crosses of financial uncertainty, mortal fragility, and social precariousness.  I can get by without religion because this isn’t home.  I don’t have to live the rest of my life here.

A few months back I was having a conversation with an American friend of mine.  We spoke of our frustrations with connecting to the Ghanaians in our communities, to understanding their thought process and the way they rationalize their decisions.  Neither of us could understand their insensibility in the face of logic and reason.  To us, our arguments were basic and manifestly self evident, whether they were related to why students should study, or why mothers should breastfeed their children, or why fathers should spend their money on school fees instead of alcohol.  But when Ghanaians spoke to one another, reasoning was neither a popular nor effective instrument of rhetoric.  Ghanaians tortuously wound their speech around the subject at hand, telling stories and advising one another implicitly.

The conversation moved on from there, and then on again and again.  Eventually the discussion turned to religion, as we had both moved away from the church during our adolescence.  And in this discussion, long after we had left our reasoning and logic scattered in pieces behind us, the solution to our inability to connect with the indigenous society presented itself in what can only be described as an epiphany: Christ spoke in parables.  Faith can’t be explained through reason.  If there was proof of God no one would need faith.  And as much as it frustrates me, Ghanaians need their faith.

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